A snip from a recent Wall Street Journal article Sep 10, 2003: (registration req.)
China Attempts to Set
New High-Tech Standards
China surprised the wireless industry three years ago by declaring it would create its own technical standard for third-generation mobile phones. Then it said it was going to develop its own format for digital television. And six weeks ago, it announced it was creating a different audio and video standard for the next wave of DVD players and videogame players...
...however, in other areas, China is looking to set the standard even beyond its own borders by licensing its standard at a lower cost to competitors...
<sarcasm> Of *course* they are doing this for the good of the global marketplace! Just like developing their own processor and distro of Linux!</sarcasm>
Maybe I'm being too skeptical here, but government mandates are inherently industrial policy. Industrial policy does NOT mean "May the best product succeed." It means "The product that most benefits officials in gov *will* succeed." Just look at agricultural policy for an idea of where this could go. (Here's a nice bit of dairy case law as an example) Seems to me each government will ultimately try to make its software base *the* standard, which will likely lead to interoperabilty problems. As for security, imagine the fun governments will have with IP and DRM once they control the standards. What a great way to control the media. Then again, maybe I am being alarmist, and China really is a worker's paradise. But, seems to me that private enterprise has a much better track record of supplying what people want. OSS is fine in the hands of private enterprise. Watch out when it becomes part of industrial policy, though. Having governments drive the OSS community is not a good thing, IMHO.
Seems to me Microsoft has an interesting out - the.Net CLR. Imagine if they go to Macromedia and suggest they rewrite Flash so that it can be called an "assembly." The site visitor goes to a site with Flash (or PDF, Quicktime, etc) and is asked "Would you like to install this.Net assembly?"
Ta-Da, the plug in is now a shared library that uses the CLR, no longer a "helper application." So even if Ozzie's demo isn't sufficient, it seems Microsoft could use this approach since it seems pretty unlikely share libs are patented, though IANAL. Some might suggest that doing this is no different than running a Java applet, but Softee could certainly argue that the CLR is much more than a browser plug-in. It's too bad that the patent system is being abused in this way. Patents are supposed to promote innovation, not stifle it. This case is so outrageous, however, it may encourage favorable legislative changes.
Re:How does that make any sense?
on
Beatles Bite Apple
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This strikes me as Apple (the record company) being a bunch of greedy bastards
Given the way the RIAA has been behaving lately, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Pretty soon we will be able to look forward to a "Behind the Music Label" expose. Somebody, somewhere is going to write a book about the thinking of the RIAA/majors during this time. I suspect it will be a stunning read, as in "How could they be so clueless?!?"
Actually I love music, and have a substantial collection on 45s, vinyl LPs, CD, minidisc, dvd, mp3, wma, and yes, even beta tape!
So tell me, what format do you rip it in? Unless you're using FLAC, you're keeping an inferior copy to the original.
Most of my stuff is in 128K mp3 format. True, the sound quality isn't quite studio quality, but for listening in the car, outside, while working on the PC or just as background music, it's certainly good enough. When I focus on a tune, I generally play it through a home theater system system, so it's modified anyway. Maybe you are a purist, so you are horrified by now. But, that's how I enjoy listening.
Complaining about the time it takes to go buy a CD is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard
No, it isn't. Back in the good old days of Napster, it was a breeze to found all kinds of interesting music, much of which was not even available in record stores. Trying to discover new music in a record store is HUGE waste of time compared to Internet methods. Certainly the contrast in time and convenience is an element in the success of iTunes. I don't have a Mac, so I will have to wait until the service is available for Windows or Linux. Currently when I want to buy a disc, I just get it from Amazon along with some books. Boring but fast.
Right, but since it's a waste of time, I don't do it, believe it or not. My point is that the industry underestimates the hassle of CD purchase and storage, especially when reasonably priced digital distribution is possible.
I'm not sure what the right price is for physical media. I have to spend time to get the CD. Once I get it home, I still have to rip it, then get rid of it at the used CD store. (I don't want to waste space storing digitized information.) That takes more time, all of which is a cost. It's a lot easier (and cost effective) for me sit at the PC and listen to the latest tracks from the legit sites, then download the free ones I like.
Time is worth far more to me than the cost of the CD. It almost doesn't matter how cheap they make CDs. They aren't worth the time it takes to go to the store and buy them. On occasion I'll buy a CD from an Internet site, but that's the very rare exception. Last but not least, I'm not really thrilled with the idea of providing the RIAA with any additional funding for all of the well known reasons.
The company, with $6 billion in annual revenue, isn't part of Vivendi's entertainment assets that are slated to be merged with General Electric Co.'s ( GE) NBC.
Anybody is Free to make a Linux distro; don't tar everybody with a Thiz brush
Sure, there are plenty of good distros out there. The problem is that there are also plenty of companies that don't care that much about their distro, or the end consumer's experience. It may be that Thiz is primarily interested in moving hardware, and as you say, just wanted to put something on it that boots.
Imagine what will happen after a large number of consumers are burned on these contraptions. Linux will get a bad rap, or at best will be considered something for advanced users. This will keep it off of desktops for a very long time.
Many malign Apple for their pricing and M$ for just about everything, but in the process dismiss the extremely difficult task of delivering a device as complex and useful as a computer to non-tech users in a functional state. Apple and Microsoft have done this on a massive scale. Same goes for (shudder) AOL.
One of the drawbacks to free software is that it is, well, free
You mention one of the drawbacks, but that isn't the biggest one in my view. Fragmentation is the huge problem. That's why I refer to all of the *nix distros as UNware. All noble in purpose, but not consistent enough to become massively effective. GNU/Linux has to be free to overcome the cost of this fragmentation.
One only has to think back the days of the first Mac and Jobs' pronouncement that "All apps will follow a standard menu bar layout...", etc. He knew that non-tech consumers wouldn't accept wildly varying UIs. Think about how Win3.x became the defacto standard, even though it was totally inferior to *nix, MacOS and OS/2.
I'm not sure why M$ is freaking so much over Linux, believe it or not. For example, a friend of mine is a card carrying M$ Hater(tm), so he ran down to Fry's to get a $200 ThizLinux box. I thought it would be interesting to monitor his experience, since his skills are probably equivalent to the typical non-tech consumer. It's been a week now, and he still hasn't been able to get the thing to dial up to the ISP or connect to his old Windows machines. Looks like I will be tech support this weekend. My point is that Thiz has put a product out there that translates to horrible experience for a non-tech consumer. This is yet another problem for OSS - no quality control, at least in terms of packaging. The underlying software may be superb, but the delivery of it to the end consumer is a disaster in this case. Yet another example of the dangers of fragmentation, which can not be avoided with OSS. Personally I like OSS and hacking around with it. Friends of mine enjoy tinkering with cars too, but in this case, I just want mine to start and go. If a manufacturer came to me riding the quality of the parts inside their auto, but it came with deficient user manuals (or none), and did things in an unpredictable manner, you can bet I wouldn't care much about the quality of the parts. Just wait until OSS becomes influenced by national industrial policy as well...
This shouldn't be a surprise, though. Foreign governments see a great way to jumpstart their own software industry with OSS. No longer will they be dependent on IBM, Siemens, Oracle, etc to run their infrastructure, and no longer will those development dollars go overseas. Eventually they will even be able to shift additional work from other countries to their shores. All sounds pretty good so far since the development work is getting done for free, enabling their programmers to use a labor cost advantage to their advantage for production software.
I suspect, however, that those on top of these efforts will eventually try to make their distro (admittedly a simplification) the predominant distro. There are all kinds of ways they can do this, and still be in compliance with the GPL.
<Segue> I've been wondering - How readable does the distributed source I might create have to be? If I have a parser in my module, do I have to distribute a.y or just a.c? Is machine generated code good enough for the GPL? How about running my code through an obfuscator, then giving it to you? You may not think it useful, but there is nothing in the GPL that states how legible code has to be as far as I know... </Segue>
The money in software is too great for Utopian ideals to prevail. Sure, there a lot of noble people out there writing great code, but I look at *nix as being a manifestation of UN-ware. Noble in purpose, but limited in effectiveness. It's flexibility is its strength and weakness. Just look at all the rants about "my fave distro/desktop is better than your fave distro/destop." Watch China and India slug it out for the permanent seats on the UN-ware security council in the coming years. Plan accordingly.
Re:Carmack and the Origins of DirectX
on
Masters of Doom
·
· Score: 1
Not only DirectX, but I would would venture to say Carmack's work drove the hardware vendors as well, which is why we now have such cheap and powerful video capability on PCs.
I just finished reading the book, and agree with your assessment. It's a fun read for anyone that played the original Wolfenstein, Wolf3D, Doom and Quake. It's especially interesting for someone who has been involved with a small tech business.
I found the discussion of the internal dynamics (good and bad) of Id to be very familiar. The description of the personalities of Carmack and Romero, how they complemented, then conflicted with each other was quite valuable for those thinking of teaming up with a friend to start a business.
What used to take a week to happen, with just the bad reviews and new movies coming out each week, now happens in a day or two.
I think the decline is accelerated by my favorite one-word-critique: "Rental"
The local drug store rents DVDs for 99 cents. I have to hear someone tell me "You have to see XYZ on the big screen" to get me to go. People are far less tolerant of a mediocre, let alone bad movie experience if they have to option to rent the DVD a while later. JMHO
I wouldn't be surprised to see countries other than the U.S. adopt other office suites first, such as Open Office, and then U.S. companies will be forced to support those products to communicate with their international partners, suppliers, offshore sites, and so on.
Let's call this new office product suite "UN Ware". Of course it will be free of national priorities, inter-agency conflict, and shifting alliances, just the the real UN...
Seems pretty obvious to me software is now thought of as a "strategic asset" by many countries, just as steel, oil, shipping, autos, etc are or have been. This also means software is now going to be shaped by industrial policy in a big way. I'm fairly skeptical that this is a good thing. It certainly will be interesting to watch China and India slug it out trying to undermine each other in the software arena. They are not exactly best of friends...
If you were to completely corporatize Linux, it wouldn't get any better. It would just *LOOK* better. That's the difference.
Interesting. I strongly agree and disagree with your post. I think you are mistaken as to how Linux got to the point it has so far: Companies like IBM, Red Hat, SuSE and a host of others see a great opportunity to break the lock M$ has on OS market share. Therefore they are investing in it. They know that the more popular Linux becomes, the more 3rd parties will develop for it, driving demand. This will allow the Big Corporate Investors to sell services on for the non-M$ platforms. In short: you can thank M$ for the acceleration of investment going into Linux.
Good looks are never a good substitute for quality. Those of us that eschew Windows and embrace Linux know this to be true
Then why is it desktop Linux strives to emulate Windows so much? The best Linux platform I own is TiVo, for which I paid $250 + subscription. It is worth every cent. Linux desktops distros are $25-$75, while XP Pro is $150. I am fine with using a Linux desktop for intellectual purposes, but there is no cost benefit when I figure in the loss of driver and app compatibility. I'd like to see Linux used more for new, revolutionary apps like TiVo than YAWCs (yet another Windows clone), or things like this:
So far Linux has provided me with a very inexpensive way of automating my house, building my own appliances...
Not sure about which Dept. funded BSD, But TCP was derived from DARPA funding. ICs where driven by the Apollo space program. Browsers, as everyone knows, evolved from efforts at CERN. Like most whiz-bang tech, gov. funding is often at the root.
BUT, that doesn't mean gov is interested in disseminating tech for commercial purposes. It's highly unlikely NASA and DARPA would have been interested in funding consumer email systems and web browsing, let alone something like AOL or GPUs for gaming.
OSS discussions have become quite interesting from the perspective of sociology and economics. The role of a fire dept, police dept, etc, are well defined and relatively immutable. This certainly isn't true for software applications! Would the gov have funded DOOM? (Imagine all of the Congressional testimony from the morality types...) Obviously not, but w/o games, I doubt the industry would have invested much money in GPU development.
Maybe it just been a while since the fall of the Berlin Wall or something, but there is a not-insignificant minority of posters who seem to subscribe to the notion of a socialist Utopia created by OSS. To those who have such views, I offer my opinion that GNU/Linux never would have made it out of Torvalds' and Stallman's minds had it not been for the all of private investment/VC (as in venture Capital, i.e. for profit) money put into the likes of Amazon, Apple, AOL, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Sun, TI, Yahoo, etc, which provided the environment in which OSS could get to the point it is today. To lose sight of this is to ignore the lessons of economic history.
Another great alternative is to find people you get along with and form a partnership.
Having been there, done that, let me say that the bold face is critical. Seems obvious, but you would be surprised how people you think you get along with can be a total nightmare to work with. You can figure out your probabilities of success by working on a business plan together first. Any difficulties there we be 10x worse when you are trying to run a business. Trust me.
Interesting point. Another thought, especially for all of those in favor of all things !M$, is that IBM may find it to their advantage to work out a deal with SCO. I'm sure Linux is just great from IBM's perspective - as long as they dominate it. I have to believe IBM's lawyers and bus. dev. people are discussing this. I suspect IBM's silence so far may reflect this thinking.
I saw Rick Sherlund (tech analyst at Goldman) on TV last night discussing tech stocks and the SCO lawsuit. His view: Linux is a challenge for M$, but Linux will be continually plagued with IP problems. Big $$$ have a way of shaping utopian ideals.
Linux is coming? What about *nix back in the 80s? What about the Mac, OS2 back then? Every wonder how a crappy segmented memory model platform clocked everything that was arguably better? I'm still waiting to see an app or feature that is really compelling about desktop Linux. OSX is more interesting.
Not meant to be a troll, even if it sounds like it.
the average P2P sharer has far more music than in the old days.
This is the interesting thing about masive hard drives. I have all of my CDs ripped to a Nomad connected to my stereo. All I have to do now is put the thing in random play mode, and the stuff I forgot I had is played. There's so much music there that the old stuff now sounds "new" again. In other words, I'm wondering if having convenient automated playlist generation is creating an additional disincentive to buy music...
I suspect it is, which is going to come as a real shock to the RIAA when CD sales don't pick up again. The RIAA is now a welfare organization for IP attorneys, who will bill the labels dry if left on their own. Too bad the labels didn't hire some decent engineers and marketeers instead of pursuing antagonistic lawsuits which don't address the real challenges of the industry.
Seemingly OT, but not really. Here's a blurb from STRATFOR:
"1135 GMT - CHINA: Because of China's military advances, the country now has
the ability to launch a surprise attack on Taiwan and keep U.S. forces in
the region at bay, a Pentagon report released July 30 said. The report also
indicated that China was pursuing a strategy to attack Taiwan. China
currently has 450 short-range missiles in the Nanjing Military Region across
the Taiwan straits that are capable of attacking Taiwan -- and possibly U.S.
targets in the region. The report also said China's military exercises are
increasingly focused on a possible clash with the United States. The
Pentagon estimates that China's defense budget is $45 billion to $65
billion, as opposed to the $20 billion China announced in 2002."
Don't kid yourself about the "benevolent" intentions of the PRC leadership. Anything that slowly but surely undermines the function of western economies is a good thing as far as the leadership is concerned. They are making a play to be global hegemon, no question. Given the political history of China, I don't think this is a good thing. I don't think they will be able to pull it off, either, but that doesn't mean there won't be hell to pay in the meantime. JMHO
Slashdot Mirror
A snip from a recent Wall Street Journal article Sep 10, 2003: (registration req.)
China Attempts to Set New High-Tech Standards
China surprised the wireless industry three years ago by declaring it would create its own technical standard for third-generation mobile phones. Then it said it was going to develop its own format for digital television. And six weeks ago, it announced it was creating a different audio and video standard for the next wave of DVD players and videogame players...
...however, in other areas, China is looking to set the standard even beyond its own borders by licensing its standard at a lower cost to competitors...
<sarcasm> Of *course* they are doing this for the good of the global marketplace! Just like developing their own processor and distro of Linux!</sarcasm>
Maybe I'm being too skeptical here, but government mandates are inherently industrial policy. Industrial policy does NOT mean "May the best product succeed." It means "The product that most benefits officials in gov *will* succeed." Just look at agricultural policy for an idea of where this could go. (Here's a nice bit of dairy case law as an example) Seems to me each government will ultimately try to make its software base *the* standard, which will likely lead to interoperabilty problems. As for security, imagine the fun governments will have with IP and DRM once they control the standards. What a great way to control the media. Then again, maybe I am being alarmist, and China really is a worker's paradise. But, seems to me that private enterprise has a much better track record of supplying what people want. OSS is fine in the hands of private enterprise. Watch out when it becomes part of industrial policy, though. Having governments drive the OSS community is not a good thing, IMHO.
Seems to me Microsoft has an interesting out - the
Ta-Da, the plug in is now a shared library that uses the CLR, no longer a "helper application." So even if Ozzie's demo isn't sufficient, it seems Microsoft could use this approach since it seems pretty unlikely share libs are patented, though IANAL. Some might suggest that doing this is no different than running a Java applet, but Softee could certainly argue that the CLR is much more than a browser plug-in. It's too bad that the patent system is being abused in this way. Patents are supposed to promote innovation, not stifle it. This case is so outrageous, however, it may encourage favorable legislative changes.
This strikes me as Apple (the record company) being a bunch of greedy bastards
Given the way the RIAA has been behaving lately, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Pretty soon we will be able to look forward to a "Behind the Music Label" expose. Somebody, somewhere is going to write a book about the thinking of the RIAA/majors during this time. I suspect it will be a stunning read, as in "How could they be so clueless?!?"
Yeah, CA's positioned for regime change. And who's up for election? An Austrian. Hmmm...
What stores would you recommend in LA/South Coast?
Interesting interpretation of my post.
Actually I love music, and have a substantial collection on 45s, vinyl LPs, CD, minidisc, dvd, mp3, wma, and yes, even beta tape!
So tell me, what format do you rip it in? Unless you're using FLAC, you're keeping an inferior copy to the original.
Most of my stuff is in 128K mp3 format. True, the sound quality isn't quite studio quality, but for listening in the car, outside, while working on the PC or just as background music, it's certainly good enough. When I focus on a tune, I generally play it through a home theater system system, so it's modified anyway. Maybe you are a purist, so you are horrified by now. But, that's how I enjoy listening.
Complaining about the time it takes to go buy a CD is about the dumbest thing I've ever heard
No, it isn't. Back in the good old days of Napster, it was a breeze to found all kinds of interesting music, much of which was not even available in record stores. Trying to discover new music in a record store is HUGE waste of time compared to Internet methods. Certainly the contrast in time and convenience is an element in the success of iTunes. I don't have a Mac, so I will have to wait until the service is available for Windows or Linux. Currently when I want to buy a disc, I just get it from Amazon along with some books. Boring but fast.
Right, but since it's a waste of time, I don't do it, believe it or not. My point is that the industry underestimates the hassle of CD purchase and storage, especially when reasonably priced digital distribution is possible.
I'm not sure what the right price is for physical media. I have to spend time to get the CD. Once I get it home, I still have to rip it, then get rid of it at the used CD store. (I don't want to waste space storing digitized information.) That takes more time, all of which is a cost. It's a lot easier (and cost effective) for me sit at the PC and listen to the latest tracks from the legit sites, then download the free ones I like.
Time is worth far more to me than the cost of the CD. It almost doesn't matter how cheap they make CDs. They aren't worth the time it takes to go to the store and buy them. On occasion I'll buy a CD from an Internet site, but that's the very rare exception. Last but not least, I'm not really thrilled with the idea of providing the RIAA with any additional funding for all of the well known reasons.
FYI:
The company, with $6 billion in annual revenue, isn't part of Vivendi's entertainment assets that are slated to be merged with General Electric Co.'s ( GE) NBC.
Anybody is Free to make a Linux distro; don't tar everybody with a Thiz brush
Sure, there are plenty of good distros out there. The problem is that there are also plenty of companies that don't care that much about their distro, or the end consumer's experience. It may be that Thiz is primarily interested in moving hardware, and as you say, just wanted to put something on it that boots.
Imagine what will happen after a large number of consumers are burned on these contraptions. Linux will get a bad rap, or at best will be considered something for advanced users. This will keep it off of desktops for a very long time.
Many malign Apple for their pricing and M$ for just about everything, but in the process dismiss the extremely difficult task of delivering a device as complex and useful as a computer to non-tech users in a functional state. Apple and Microsoft have done this on a massive scale. Same goes for (shudder) AOL.
One of the drawbacks to free software is that it is, well, free
You mention one of the drawbacks, but that isn't the biggest one in my view. Fragmentation is the huge problem. That's why I refer to all of the *nix distros as UNware. All noble in purpose, but not consistent enough to become massively effective. GNU/Linux has to be free to overcome the cost of this fragmentation.
One only has to think back the days of the first Mac and Jobs' pronouncement that "All apps will follow a standard menu bar layout...", etc. He knew that non-tech consumers wouldn't accept wildly varying UIs. Think about how Win3.x became the defacto standard, even though it was totally inferior to *nix, MacOS and OS/2.
I'm not sure why M$ is freaking so much over Linux, believe it or not. For example, a friend of mine is a card carrying M$ Hater(tm), so he ran down to Fry's to get a $200 ThizLinux box. I thought it would be interesting to monitor his experience, since his skills are probably equivalent to the typical non-tech consumer. It's been a week now, and he still hasn't been able to get the thing to dial up to the ISP or connect to his old Windows machines. Looks like I will be tech support this weekend. My point is that Thiz has put a product out there that translates to horrible experience for a non-tech consumer. This is yet another problem for OSS - no quality control, at least in terms of packaging. The underlying software may be superb, but the delivery of it to the end consumer is a disaster in this case. Yet another example of the dangers of fragmentation, which can not be avoided with OSS. Personally I like OSS and hacking around with it. Friends of mine enjoy tinkering with cars too, but in this case, I just want mine to start and go. If a manufacturer came to me riding the quality of the parts inside their auto, but it came with deficient user manuals (or none), and did things in an unpredictable manner, you can bet I wouldn't care much about the quality of the parts. Just wait until OSS becomes influenced by national industrial policy as well...
This shouldn't be a surprise, though. Foreign governments see a great way to jumpstart their own software industry with OSS. No longer will they be dependent on IBM, Siemens, Oracle, etc to run their infrastructure, and no longer will those development dollars go overseas. Eventually they will even be able to shift additional work from other countries to their shores. All sounds pretty good so far since the development work is getting done for free, enabling their programmers to use a labor cost advantage to their advantage for production software.
I suspect, however, that those on top of these efforts will eventually try to make their distro (admittedly a simplification) the predominant distro. There are all kinds of ways they can do this, and still be in compliance with the GPL.
<Segue>
I've been wondering - How readable does the distributed source I might create have to be? If I have a parser in my module, do I have to distribute a.y or just a.c? Is machine generated code good enough for the GPL? How about running my code through an obfuscator, then giving it to you? You may not think it useful, but there is nothing in the GPL that states how legible code has to be as far as I know...
</Segue>
The money in software is too great for Utopian ideals to prevail. Sure, there a lot of noble people out there writing great code, but I look at *nix as being a manifestation of UN-ware. Noble in purpose, but limited in effectiveness. It's flexibility is its strength and weakness. Just look at all the rants about "my fave distro/desktop is better than your fave distro/destop." Watch China and India slug it out for the permanent seats on the UN-ware security council in the coming years. Plan accordingly.
Not only DirectX, but I would would venture to say Carmack's work drove the hardware vendors as well, which is why we now have such cheap and powerful video capability on PCs.
Not bad for both Carmack and Romero.
I just finished reading the book, and agree with your assessment. It's a fun read for anyone that played the original Wolfenstein, Wolf3D, Doom and Quake. It's especially interesting for someone who has been involved with a small tech business.
I found the discussion of the internal dynamics (good and bad) of Id to be very familiar. The description of the personalities of Carmack and Romero, how they complemented, then conflicted with each other was quite valuable for those thinking of teaming up with a friend to start a business.
What used to take a week to happen, with just the bad reviews and new movies coming out each week, now happens in a day or two.
I think the decline is accelerated by my favorite one-word-critique: "Rental"
The local drug store rents DVDs for 99 cents. I have to hear someone tell me "You have to see XYZ on the big screen" to get me to go. People are far less tolerant of a mediocre, let alone bad movie experience if they have to option to rent the DVD a while later. JMHO
I wouldn't be surprised to see countries other than the U.S. adopt other office suites first, such as Open Office, and then U.S. companies will be forced to support those products to communicate with their international partners, suppliers, offshore sites, and so on.
Let's call this new office product suite "UN Ware". Of course it will be free of national priorities, inter-agency conflict, and shifting alliances, just the the real UN...
Seems pretty obvious to me software is now thought of as a "strategic asset" by many countries, just as steel, oil, shipping, autos, etc are or have been. This also means software is now going to be shaped by industrial policy in a big way. I'm fairly skeptical that this is a good thing. It certainly will be interesting to watch China and India slug it out trying to undermine each other in the software arena. They are not exactly best of friends...
If you were to completely corporatize Linux, it wouldn't get any better. It would just *LOOK* better. That's the difference.
Interesting. I strongly agree and disagree with your post. I think you are mistaken as to how Linux got to the point it has so far: Companies like IBM, Red Hat, SuSE and a host of others see a great opportunity to break the lock M$ has on OS market share. Therefore they are investing in it. They know that the more popular Linux becomes, the more 3rd parties will develop for it, driving demand. This will allow the Big Corporate Investors to sell services on for the non-M$ platforms. In short: you can thank M$ for the acceleration of investment going into Linux.
Good looks are never a good substitute for quality. Those of us that eschew Windows and embrace Linux know this to be true
Then why is it desktop Linux strives to emulate Windows so much? The best Linux platform I own is TiVo, for which I paid $250 + subscription. It is worth every cent. Linux desktops distros are $25-$75, while XP Pro is $150. I am fine with using a Linux desktop for intellectual purposes, but there is no cost benefit when I figure in the loss of driver and app compatibility. I'd like to see Linux used more for new, revolutionary apps like TiVo than YAWCs (yet another Windows clone), or things like this:
So far Linux has provided me with a very inexpensive way of automating my house, building my own appliances...
Not sure about which Dept. funded BSD, But TCP was derived from DARPA funding. ICs where driven by the Apollo space program. Browsers, as everyone knows, evolved from efforts at CERN. Like most whiz-bang tech, gov. funding is often at the root.
BUT, that doesn't mean gov is interested in disseminating tech for commercial purposes. It's highly unlikely NASA and DARPA would have been interested in funding consumer email systems and web browsing, let alone something like AOL or GPUs for gaming.
OSS discussions have become quite interesting from the perspective of sociology and economics. The role of a fire dept, police dept, etc, are well defined and relatively immutable. This certainly isn't true for software applications! Would the gov have funded DOOM? (Imagine all of the Congressional testimony from the morality types...) Obviously not, but w/o games, I doubt the industry would have invested much money in GPU development.
Maybe it just been a while since the fall of the Berlin Wall or something, but there is a not-insignificant minority of posters who seem to subscribe to the notion of a socialist Utopia created by OSS. To those who have such views, I offer my opinion that GNU/Linux never would have made it out of Torvalds' and Stallman's minds had it not been for the all of private investment/VC (as in venture Capital, i.e. for profit) money put into the likes of Amazon, Apple, AOL, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, Sun, TI, Yahoo, etc, which provided the environment in which OSS could get to the point it is today. To lose sight of this is to ignore the lessons of economic history.
Another great alternative is to find people you get along with and form a partnership.
Having been there, done that, let me say that the bold face is critical. Seems obvious, but you would be surprised how people you think you get along with can be a total nightmare to work with. You can figure out your probabilities of success by working on a business plan together first. Any difficulties there we be 10x worse when you are trying to run a business. Trust me.
Interesting point. Another thought, especially for all of those in favor of all things !M$, is that IBM may find it to their advantage to work out a deal with SCO. I'm sure Linux is just great from IBM's perspective - as long as they dominate it. I have to believe IBM's lawyers and bus. dev. people are discussing this. I suspect IBM's silence so far may reflect this thinking.
I saw Rick Sherlund (tech analyst at Goldman) on TV last night discussing tech stocks and the SCO lawsuit. His view: Linux is a challenge for M$, but Linux will be continually plagued with IP problems. Big $$$ have a way of shaping utopian ideals.
You obviously never met any Vietnamese boat people. Or Poles. Or Czechs. Or Hungarians. Or Latvians. Or Lithuanians. Or Estonians...
To me, this makes Linux worth it's weight in gold.
Seems like a strange way to measure value. How much does Linux weigh? GNU? OS X? Windows?
Linux is coming? What about *nix back in the 80s? What about the Mac, OS2 back then? Every wonder how a crappy segmented memory model platform clocked everything that was arguably better? I'm still waiting to see an app or feature that is really compelling about desktop Linux. OSX is more interesting.
Not meant to be a troll, even if it sounds like it.
the average P2P sharer has far more music than in the old days.
This is the interesting thing about masive hard drives. I have all of my CDs ripped to a Nomad connected to my stereo. All I have to do now is put the thing in random play mode, and the stuff I forgot I had is played. There's so much music there that the old stuff now sounds "new" again. In other words, I'm wondering if having convenient automated playlist generation is creating an additional disincentive to buy music...
I suspect it is, which is going to come as a real shock to the RIAA when CD sales don't pick up again. The RIAA is now a welfare organization for IP attorneys, who will bill the labels dry if left on their own. Too bad the labels didn't hire some decent engineers and marketeers instead of pursuing antagonistic lawsuits which don't address the real challenges of the industry.
Seemingly OT, but not really. Here's a blurb from STRATFOR:
"1135 GMT - CHINA: Because of China's military advances, the country now has the ability to launch a surprise attack on Taiwan and keep U.S. forces in the region at bay, a Pentagon report released July 30 said. The report also indicated that China was pursuing a strategy to attack Taiwan. China currently has 450 short-range missiles in the Nanjing Military Region across the Taiwan straits that are capable of attacking Taiwan -- and possibly U.S. targets in the region. The report also said China's military exercises are increasingly focused on a possible clash with the United States. The Pentagon estimates that China's defense budget is $45 billion to $65 billion, as opposed to the $20 billion China announced in 2002."
Don't kid yourself about the "benevolent" intentions of the PRC leadership. Anything that slowly but surely undermines the function of western economies is a good thing as far as the leadership is concerned. They are making a play to be global hegemon, no question. Given the political history of China, I don't think this is a good thing. I don't think they will be able to pull it off, either, but that doesn't mean there won't be hell to pay in the meantime. JMHO